mom friends - Boston Moms Blog

This week has been one of THOSE weeks. One of those weeks where, by the time your alarm goes off on Friday morning, you want to pull the covers over your head and try to avoid the coming day. So you do. But then you hear your 3-year-old calling, “Mommy!” over and over again from her room. Up and at ’em!

Yesterday I hit my breaking point.

I won’t go into details, but it had been a slow build of stress over the course of the week, with long commutes, seemingly endless tantrums, and serious mom guilt. While carrying my threenager out of the library in full tantrum mode, kicking and screaming, the baby started to cry as well. I made it outside carrying my two hysterical children and was greeted by that gold star mom who I look up to — you know, the one who has three kids, always seems to have it all together, and is just so damn nice about it all. When she started talking about taking my daughter home with her for a play date, I almost broke down in tears. She was gladly taking on a fourth, and I was struggling with two!

We finally made it to the car and promptly got stuck in traffic. The baby continued to cry, and that hour in the car with two very unhappy children put me in a pretty bad place. The place where you question your abilities as a mother, and think that you must be doing it all wrong, and worry that all this bad parenting will cause your children irrevocable harm.

Then I got a text from a mommy friend. She was just checking in, wondering if I’d finally gotten around to getting that jogging stroller so we could start running together. I didn’t go into detail about my week, but she seemed to sense my state of mind. She wrote, “You’re totally not alone girl. Just know that.”

Then I got an email from another mommy friend with a link to this article.

And all of a sudden, things felt better, with a little help from my friends.

I met a great group of women at a new mom’s group many years ago. We talked a lot about sleep — mostly about the amount we weren’t getting and how much we missed it. We passed along boxes of diapers that had become too small. One woman discovered during class that her period had come back, and someone else had a tampon. We have literally fed each other, at potluck playdates and holiday cookie swaps. And we currently feed each other figuratively, with heartfelt messages when we sense someone else is struggling. Or funny articles or videos meant to make each other laugh.

Motherhood is hard. And also great. There are days when you feel like a supermom — stopping tantrums before they start, cleaning the house, cooking meals, and planning a creative craft for the kiddos. And then there are days when you do what you can to get by. And we do get by. With a little help from our friends.

Rachel Wilson
Rachel is a native of the West Coast and didn't know that her straight hair could frizz until she made the move East! After earning a Master of Environmental Management from Yale, she moved to Boston for a job opportunity and, on her first Saturday night in the city, met the man who would become her husband. They married in 2012 and are learning more every day about how to be parents to daughters Annabel (2013) and Eleanor (2016). Rachel and her family recently relocated from Charlestown to the Metrowest suburbs and are enjoying their yard, but dislike shoveling snow from their driveway. Rachel currently works as an energy and environmental consultant, and wore Birkenstocks before they were trendy. Likes: her family, her in-laws, cooking ambitious meals and leaving the dishes for someone else, hiking, running, yoga, climbing mountains, reading books, farmers' markets and her CSA, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, the sound of her daughters' laughter, and coffee Dislikes: running out of milk, New England winters, diaper rash, wastefulness, cell phones at the dinner table